


Safe Anchor

by glorious_spoon



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentioned Kate Argent, Platonic Cuddling, Scenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 01:44:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14298039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: After his run-in with Kate, Derek can't get her scent off of him. Stiles (reluctantly) helps. 4x02 tag.





	Safe Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure this has been done before, but eh. What is fandom for if not cliches.
> 
> Gen or pre-slash (if you squint).

“Okay, seriously, what’s his problem,” Stiles asked quietly, after the third time Derek rolled his shoulders, rubbing his arms, fingers skittering over his shirt like he wanted to tear it off. Which, yeah, Derek always kind of had a dubious relationship with shirts, but this kind of restlessness wasn’t like him. “He’s acting like me. Is there itching powder in his clothes or something?”

"Kate was..." Scott glanced at Derek and lowered his voice. "She was all over him. He still smells like her."

Oh. _Oh._ Well, that explained the tense, twitchy way Derek was holding himself, like he wanted nothing more than to crawl out of his own skin. It was a feeling Stiles was pretty familiar with, although mostly for somewhat less horrifying reasons.

Scott still looked uncomfortable, and no wonder. He wasn’t always the most perceptive crayon in the box, but he wasn’t actually stupid, and if Derek looked jittery and _off_ to Stiles, there was no telling how he seemed to someone with wolf senses. Bad, apparently.

“So,” Stiles said slowly. “We should probably get him a shower. And a change of clothes.”

“We don’t exactly have time to run out to the mall, Stiles!”

“Right, right, okay, priorities,” Stiles agreed. Peter was out on the balcony, having a furious whispered conversation on the phone. Lydia and Kira were already gone; Malia was sitting cross-legged on the counter, cleaning her nails with a long knife.

“Don’t look at me,” she said when he glanced at her. “ _I’m_ not cuddling him all better.”

“What?” Malia snorted, and Stiles turned to Scott, who looked, if possible, even more uncomfortable. “Excuse me, _what?_ How did we get from clothes that don’t smell like _eau de psycho_ to cuddling?”

Scott made a face. “Scenting,” he said reluctantly.

“What?” Stiles said again, but it was starting to make a terrible kind of sense. “So, like… cover up the bad touch smells with good touch smells?”

“Basically. But it would have to be someone familiar. Someone safe.”

The three of them contemplated that for several moments. On the far end of the loft, Derek popped up from the couch for a fourth time, made a tight circuit around it, then sat down again. Stiles was familiar enough with werewolf senses to know that he probably _could_ hear them just fine, but just then he didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything other than controlling the urge to claw his own skin off.

“Who do we know who’d smell familiar and safe to Derek?” he asked eventually. “Scott—”

“No,” Scott said quickly. And then, looking reluctant. “Look, I mean, I would, but it would be a bad idea. I’m an alpha, another werewolf… we get along okay now, but we’re not exactly pack, and there’s too much bad blood there. I’d be the opposite of soothing, trust me.”

“I already said I’m not doing it,” Malia added. With a sinking feeling, Stiles realized that they were both looking at him, faces expectant.

“Well,” he sighed. “Shit.”

* * *

"What do you want,” Derek asked when Stiles plopped onto the couch next to him, hip to hip even though there were three cushions worth of empty space left.

“You’re warm,” Stiles said blithely, and leaned over until he was pressed up along Derek’s whole side, wondering if he was about to take a flying headlong trip into the nearest wall. His heart was thundering, and Derek had to be able to hear it. “I’m cold. Suck it up and share the fruits of your hyperactive werewolf metabolism. Or go find me a sweatshirt.”

Derek gave him a flatly unimpressed look, the one that said he could see right through Stiles and all of his bullshit. It was a quintessentially _Derek_ kind of look, but Stiles hadn’t seen it once since Mexico, which kind of made his heart hurt in ways that he really couldn’t deal with. He’d already known that Derek was fucked up, and he’d even known some of the reasons why, but it was different now that he could see the echo of that wide-eyed kid in Derek’s guarded adult face.

There was a better than decent chance that Derek would just shove him off the couch, prickly defensive bastard that he was, but it was a chance that Stiles was just going to have to take. He leaned his head against Derek’s shoulder, breathed in the smell of him: soap and leather and angst, mostly. Maybe just a lingering hint of perfume, but that was all he could smell of Kate Argent. Human noses were probably a mercy sometimes.

Derek didn’t shove him off the couch. He didn’t move, either. He was like a mountain of warm tense muscle and abortive little twitches and banked violence, possibly the most uncomfortable person Stiles had ever cuddled with, and that included Scott, who had pointy elbows and an unfortunate tendency to drool in his sleep. But he didn’t shove him off, and he didn’t stand up and stalk away to brood in the darkness somewhere, which meant that Scott had been right. This was helping.

Made sense. All the wolves he knew were tactile as hell, other than Derek. It was probably, like. Instinct, or something.

“I’m not deaf, you know,” Derek said eventually, shifting slightly. “Or stupid. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“I figured,” Stiles said into his shoulder. “Given that we don’t exactly have that kind of relationship, do we?”

“No.” Derek actually sounded kind of amused, and yeah, okay, it was sort of funny. Most of the physical contact that they’d had up to this point involved one or the other of them getting punched, shoved, or slammed into something. It probably said something really sad about Derek’s life that Stiles was still the safest-smelling person around. “No, we really don’t.”

“Is it working?” Stiles asked, without lifting his head.

Derek was silent for a while. Eventually, he heaved a put-upon sigh and looped his arm over Stiles’ shoulders, a warm, heavy weight. “Don’t talk.”

“I wasn’t,” Stiles protested, hiding his smile in Derek’s shirt.

“Good,” Derek said, and rested his cheek against Stiles’ hair, breathing in slow and deep.


End file.
